


Romance Master: LEVEL UP!

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: And That John Is Devious, And That Kanaya Is Armed, Basically All You Need to Know Is That Karkat Is Awkward, Fluff, Have Fun!, I Have Wanted to Post This Forever, M/M, More tags to be added, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, fluff fluff fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-17 11:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1385368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which one reborn New-Earth troll is a high maintenance moirail, boyfriendating is hard for members of <i>any</i> species, and the human boy doesn’t want anyone getting down to the bottom of this mystery...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. +5 EXP, You Acquired a HUMAN DATE

It was nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning, a little too early for things to get started. The eerily nonlethal New-Earth sun peacefully baking its domain in cosmic radiation even though it was too early to really get hot. Didn't mean that everything didn't smell like summer, like it was already melting away. In the café, two teenage boys were sprawled out in plastic chairs, looking at each other across from the egg-based nutritional supplements that John called omelets. This John human sat on one side of the table, facing a perpetually grouchy, nocturnal lifeform who seemed to be composed entirely of angles—“like the pissy protractor that could,” as this boy was dubbed by his equally nocturnal and alien friend, Sollux.  
  
It was the more irascible of the pair who was currently having a lot of trouble finding a hinge to his jaw, the one that would help him stop looking like he was trying to inhale cheap café tablecloth. There was a very high possibility that he was drooling onto his plate.  
  
Karkat Vantas was having a difficult morning.  
  
“What?” He said after a moment. This seemed insufficient. He tried again. “What the _shit?_ ” Nope, still insufficient. John, visibly unconcerned by Karkat’s latest crisis, was mashing off a chunk of omelet. Karkat stared as though John were intending on headbutting a passing airplane or demonstrating that he really did have five toes (humans). John was capable of both. Right now, he was more interested in eggy goodness. This could not stand.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Karkat demanded, and banged a righteous fist against the table. _Crunch._ Whoops, shit, hadn’t meant to do that so hard. He whipped his hands back down, and nudged his plate over the dent in the plastic. John snorted at him.  
  
“It means exactly what I said. Dude, aren’t you supposed to be happy?”  
  
“No!” Karkat screeched, and settled for crossing his vastly less fragile arms. “You said you’d met someone! I was prepared to be happy with you, and treat you to celebratory hookie breakfast—“  
  
“School doesn’t happen in the summer, Karkat.”  
  
“—like I believe you or Strider, shut up.” Karkat jabbed at John with an emphatic claw. He would not be deterred. “ _Hookie breakfast._ Which is a thing I got you. I had a speech all worked out on the subject of this hypothetical girlfriend. It…” Was actually fairly lackluster, because most of it had been composed while Karkat ate his weight in ice cream and refused to stop harassing his moirail.  
  
Also, the first few lines (not to be read, merely penned for administrative purposes) were: _Dear John, you suck. Thank you for yet again locating an appropriately female companion to vomit your affections all over while forgetting that any of your other friends exist and any plans you may or may not have made as to one particular friend’s Netflix and marathoning the A-F section. Excuse me while I go slit my unworthy wrists and die in hollow-eyed agony and laughable heartbreak on your doorstep clutching a handful of the fucking rage daisies I have literally sweated from my pores just for you. Go die in a fire._  
  
Followed by: _So, what's she like? When do I get to meet her with you out of the room, so I can promise to personally scalp her if she so much as looks askance at your stupid squishy human heart?_  
  
Karkat struggled for something good to say about the bulge-shriveling shit Past Him had managed to pass off as moral support, and ended up with, “It had a bunch of semicolons—which you suck at using.” John raised his eyebrows over a half-finished omelet. “It would have been an educational experience!”  
  
“Hm,” the human grinned around his fork. “I dunno. Whenever I hear a semicolon, it just sounds like a period to me.”  
  
“That’s because you’re stupid.”  
  
John just grinned at Karkat, looking far too pleased with himself. “You know, Karkat, whenever you have to _try_ to be mean, it’s kind of like the you-version of getting a hug! A really prickly, crotchety hug.” He shoveled some more omelet into his mouth as Karkat’s expression withered, possibly just to subject Karkat to the half-masticated horror contents of his mouth when he added. “So, are you going to keep lecturing me about semicolons or do you wanna hang out for real? Because I had a whole huge adventure to take you on!”  
  
“Okay, I officially forbid you from ever speaking to the pantsless Harley spawn again. Clearly, he’s a bad influence. And while I’m sure that you do know the genuine meaning of the word ‘adventure’, you’re just—“  
  
John interrupted Karkat by grinning. A big, happy grin, one that reminded Karkat that he knew the shape of every single one of John’s teeth, and made Karkat’s elbows slip off the table. The omelet was finished, and John tapped nervous fingers against the tabletop like he wanted to be tormenting his piano. “Karkat.” No—not _nervous._ Excited. He looked like he was about to take off in the air and confuse the local radar agencies. Karkat’s bloodpusher did a wobbling belly flop into his stomach, bobbed a few times, and left him totally perplexed as to which organ was where. Sadly, this was a sensation that Karkat was extremely well-versed in.  
  
Karkat could tell that John wasn’t nervous because John didn’t have a doubt in the world about Karkat’s answer. Karkat had been visibly, vocally, and embarrassingly in love with the human when they were six sweeps and constantly afraid for their lives. It was one of those biological survival mechanisms—if you stir mortal peril, something reasonably close to sexual awareness, and vaguely compatible lifeforms into one vertigo-inducing soup, you got everybody’s hormones in a tizzy and swoon, swoon, swoon all over the fucking place. Only, now they were sixteen and oozing their way through peacetimes, their enemies emphatically vaporized, and blessed with a much wider assortment of vaguely compatible lifeforms milling around and being all swoon-worthy. But Karkat still had that knee-jerk, _holy shit!_ reaction to John Egbert. As far as he could tell, this was because John Egbert was mortal peril all by himself, with his smile stabbing Karkat in the thinkpan and his voice causing physiologically impossible gut stirrings.  
  
And although Karkat had managed not to proclaim this in a public message board _this_ time around, he still had good reason to believe that John knew all about his ongoing, cull-me-now crush.  
  
Because when Karkat had sat down at the table and grumbled, “Yes, your food slave is here now, weep in joy and gratitude—I see you’ve already ordered two of the most expensive entrees on the menu. Thank you, Egbert, for that early morning kindness. Now that the pleasantries are over, do you want to actually tell me who this girl you’re quadranted for is, or do you want to go into even more pan-hemorrhaging detail about her eyes or whatever?”  
  
And John had grinned and said, “Yeah sure. Karkat. It’s not a girl. It’s you.”  
  
Karkat had frozen over his omelet, pan slowly being melted into misshapen slag. He’d blinked once.  
  
“Surprise!” John had felt the need to add, because he was kind of an asshole.  
  
Which led to right now, with Karkat attempting to process whether the past ten minutes of conversation had really happened.  
  
Karkat glanced down at his uneaten omelet and picked up his fork. He kind of wanted to make John work for it—but he also wasn’t going to get a chance like this again. “I guess you can take me out on a date,” Karkat growled, savaging the eggs. “If you ask very nicely.”  
  
“Karkat,” John went, a smile in his voice, and his fingers close enough to touch Karkat’s. “May I make a grand romantic gesture for you seeing as I kind of actually like you a lot?”  
  
“You may,” Karkat agreed, in a voice shrunk so tiny it was kind of a wonder John heard it well enough to laugh.

\----

CG: KANAYA  
  
CG: KANAYA I AM TOTALLY NOT FREAKING OUT OVER HERE, WOW, YOU SURE HAVE CHOSEN TO ASSOCIATE YOURSELF WITH AN ICE COLD SPECIMEN OF MANGRIT, I APPLAUD YOUR EFFORTS AND YOU WILL SURELY BE REWARDED BECAUSE I AM THE GODDAMN MASTER OF CHILLED THE FUCK OUT.  
  
GA: Hello, Karkat.  
  
GA: What Has Our Well-Intentioned Heir Wrought This Time?  
  
CG: I AM NOT EVEN GOING TO QUESTION YOUR DISTURBINGLY ACCURATE POWERS OF PERCEPTION ABOUT THINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE TO DO WITH JOHN, OKAY, I KNOW BETTER THAN TO DOUBT THE FACTS OF LIFE.  
  
CG: THE IMPORTANT THING, AND WE’RE GOING TO KEEP COMING BACK TO THIS, IS THAT MY ALMIGHTY AND UNFLINCHING STOICISM IS AKIN TO A GLORIOUS LION STANDING TRIUMPHANT IN THE SAVANNAH THAT IS A HISTORY OF PERSONAL FAILURE AND POOR DECISION-MAKING SKILLS.  
  
CG: AND IN THIS PICTURESQUE LANDSCAPE THAT I AM PAINTING BEFORE YOUR MIND’S EYE WITH MY COMMUNICATION SKILLS, WHICH ARE A THING THAT IS IMPORTANT, AND ALSO A THING THAT I HAVE  
  
CG: PLEASE NOTE THE STARTLING, BUT WELCOME LACK OF A TOWERING RAGE VOLCANO READY TO SPEW FLAMING CHUNKS OF THE FECES I CALL COMMON SENSE AND DEMOLISH THIS UNTAINTED WILDERNESS WITH A THOUSAND BANSHEE SHRIEKS OF DESPAIR.  
  
GA: Noted.  
  
GA: Not To Imply That You Have Failed To Convince Me Of Your Tranquility, But Are You Feeling Alright?  
  
GA: Please Remember That Breathing Is Not An Optional Practice.  
  
CG: JOHN ASKED ME OUT ON A DATE HELP.  
  
GA: Congratulations, Karkat!  
  
CG: THANK YOU.  
  
GA: You Should Begin Taking Deep Breaths Now.  
  
CG: YOU HAVE NO IDEA. I AM HANDLING THAT SHIT LIKE A PRO.


	2. +30 Exp, YOUR HAND.  IS NOW.  AN ERASER.

Including The Breakfast which had more or less altered the entire course of Karkat’s life, dating John was very similar to being friends with John. There were one or two slight differences.  
  
Karkat’s bloodpusher pretended to be defective, his hands sweated so much he spent the vast majority of his time wiping them on his pants and feeling disgusting, he couldn’t seem to find a happy medium between unforgivably giggly and raging asshat, and every time John blinked, all the air raid sirens went off and demanded Karkat’s attention because he was maaaybe a little too focused on what John was doing, and whether that meant Karkat had done something wrong, or was about to do something wrong, or had the potential of doing something wrong in the next five minutes. Segue that right on into overanalyzing everything John said when Karkat knew—all the way through his soul—that John’s thoughts just weren’t that complicated. Then you had Karkat’s train of thought merrily derailing itself every time John showed a little pity.  
  
So yeah, business as usual for Karkat’s half of their fucked-up friendship. The difference was that John, for the first time in recorded history, actually looked a little nervous too.  
  
Not shit-your-pants terrified—they’d all entertained that one sentiment in spades during the game and were numb to anything that involved less than a gallon of gushing blood—but low-level, awkward teenage nervousness that Karkat rather unfairly wanted to cheer about. Ha! It wasn’t just him feeling like a complete tool, was it? Take that, horrible life! Suck it!  
  
“This is kind of weird, huh,” Karkat observed over John’s shoulder. Once more, John enthusiastically committed video game suicide. Karkat raised his eyebrows.  
  
John looked over at him. He was wearing a crumpled shirt with some stylized human band logo that Karkat was 90% sure belonged to Strider. His glasses were just as smudged as the screen in front of them. He was wearing a wristband.  
  
Karkat was genuinely unsure if he had ever seen anyone wearing a wristband.  
  
Item 1: John dressed for dates like he got his ideas from eighties magazines. Karkat, who was wearing the exact same sweater John saw every week, did not know what this was meant to accomplish.  
  
“Weirder than I thought,” John admitted with a dime a dozen grin. “But when was the last time I got to drag somebody to one of these? I’m just rusty.” Oh, and there went the eyebrows. Karkat narrowed his eyes at them. “I think the real question here is how much time you’ve been spending at the arcade, Karkat! Such a nerd.”  
  
Karkat refused to stand here and listen to this. His honor as a noble brother of the Super Smash was being questioned, and that was absolutely unacceptable, okay? Growling, he attempted to stab a quarter through the game until he found the coin slot and straightened up to hand John his pasty human ass all across pixelated space.  
  
“For your information—” Karkat began as his thumbs flew. John was swearing.  
  
“Karkat, you’re not really going to monol— _what?!_ That was such a cheap shot!”  
  
“ _For your information_ , I wasn’t talking about you sucking—you suck exhaustively, Egbert, you deplete the world’s supply of suck and concentrate it into whatever corner of the abyss you inhabit, you repel success as though you would combust upon impact—“  
  
“Oh yeah? Take this—!”  
  
“You sucking is a fact of life we have all accepted with time and forcibly lowered expectations.” Shitfuck, Egbert was spamming the combos again. What was with these controls? Karkat’s joystick was faulty. The troll snapped his teeth at the screen. _I am physiologically capable of rending and digesting you for nutrients. Know this._ “I was talking about it being kind of weird, you know.” Karkat coughed. “…Dating.”  
  
He then witnessed the phenomenon that was how quickly, precisely, you could commit arcade game suicide.  
  
Item two: John was not that terrible at this game.  
  
He looked flatly over at John as Karkat’s character merrily victory danced his supremacy. Karkat’s cofriendleader and, well okay, Karkat hadn’t quadranted it yet, because John kept putting salt in his drinks every time he wasn’t paying attention (and that was the only reason Karkat would ever use the human term, so there you go) _boyfriend_ (?) was hunched over the controls of the game. “Aw man,” he said lightly, as though he did not just commit gaming travesty so great that it would be forever engraved in the annals of time. As Karkat eyed him, he huddled further into his hoodie and surreptitiously touched his feet back to the floor.  
  
You could not beat a troll’s hearing. Karkat narrowed his eyes and abandoned his character’s sexy victory dance to loop an arm around John’s neck and hiss, “ _Intelligence devices_ , you idiot!”  
  
“Gmph,” John wrestled Karkat’s sleeve out of his mouth. He provided, with supercilious eyebrows that Karkat gave an evil look, the knowledge that, “They’re called security cameras, Karkat.”  
  
“I don’t care if their called the Empress’s Lacy Underpants, don’t you dare do the windy thing in front of them,” the troll shot back, giving the game up for a lost cause and just towing them both towards the door. An employee appeared to be contemplating the Help button, looking at Karkat asphyxiate his friend. Karkat ended these aspirations towards heroism with a single look and propelled John out the door. The bell dinged, signaling their safety from the intelligence devices, and Karkat breathed in relief.  
  
John appeared to be… displaying failed structural integrity. Yes. Let’s go with that. He was drooping, and it was downright pitiful—no, not in the good way. There was no good way to look so forlorn, except in movies, or something. Granted, Karkat would have been pretty down too, if he had the gaming skills of an organism without opposable thumbs.  
  
“Erk,” Karkat said, mangling any attempt at consolation. He tried to release his chokehold on the Heir without, you know, looking like he was doing it. His claws somehow ended up on top of John’s head. Karkat stared in dismay as he awkwardly patted the human’s skull, probably getting his fingers all tangled up in John’s hair. Why was he…? Great Amorphous Mother Grub, what was _wrong_ with him?  
  
John was giving Karkat a confused look, though. That was better than looking like he had before (basically, like that time when Rose sat on his glasses).  
  
“Wanna get something to eat?” Karkat grumbled, hand slowly retreating to the relatively safe territory of John’s shoulder. “Burgers or something?” Generously, he allowed, “I bet you’d game better if your ridiculously flighty human metabolism had carbohydrate supplements on which to maintain itself.”  
  
John smiled at him. Karkat’s hand reached its destination. Nope, still awkward. Defeated, it slunk back down to his side.  
  
“Burgers?” John asked, before Karkat could start clearing his throat like he had a lung condition.  
  
“…Yeah, sure.” Karkat’s body had just gotten with the program. Were you just in nearly full-body contact with your matesp—kisme— _boyfriend?_ Yup. Prepare to turn bright red and start sweating out the majority of your body weight. Special.  
  
In addition, be acutely aware of the fact that you are no longer touching, because you are without a doubt, the least smooth troll in existence.  
  
And goddammit, there he went, clearing his throat noisily. This called for a double facepalm combo, and possibly sending out SOS texts to his moirail. Why the fuck were they still standing there?! Was John getting some kind of sadistic enjoyment out of watching Karkat act like he needed the Heimlich? Here they were, on their third kind-of, mostly a date (except neither of them called it a date because that would be confusing), standing at a distance on a crowded street in front of an arcade where the intelligence officers were perhaps being called at this very moment, and not doing anything but staring at their feet and lapsing into silence. Why were they being quiet? They were never quiet. John Egbert was incapable of not running his mouth, and then Karkat just had to reply and oh god, Karkat had done something. He was the fuckup extraordinaire and he—  
  
 _Oh_ , thought Karkat, his mental flipping the fuck out crashing into a wall, collapsing, and twitching briefly as he lifted his eyes from his feet.  
  
Item three: Karkat was having a heart attack.  
  
John Egbert’s fingers were touching his, kind of. Like a fork touches spaghetti, or—Karkat wasn’t planning on eating John’s human deliciousness, okay? Put less gruesomely, they were holding hands. Hysterically, Karkat thought that their fingers together looked like both sides of an eraser.  
  
Less hysterically, he thought _wow_ , and felt quietly too warm. No one was even looking at them. A crowd of people gamely shuffled around the two teenage boys in front of the game shop. Karkat kind of wanted to fling their hands into the air and dedicate his victory speech to every asshole on Alternia, but he was too busy smiling. John cleared his throat the way nice people do when they’re pretending to have asthma.  
  
“So, food,” he mumbled.  
  
“Processed meat substance,” Karkat said, not because he really thought that was how it was said anymore, but he wanted to make John scowl at him. The human was looking a little pink around the edges. Karkat’s grin widened.  
  
Best. Date. _Ever._

\----

Karkat informed Kanaya of this pretty much the minute he got back to his hive. Technically, he also signaled his appreciation to Sollux with an anonymous SUCK IT, DOUCHEBAG on one of his websites, but Kanaya was the one who got the full extent of Karkat having gone on the best date ever. He was quite possibly never going to stop gloating.  
  
CG: GUESS WHAT I DID TODAY.  
  
GA: Given Your State Of Distress Leading Up To This Particular Friday, I Can Only Assume  
  
GA: The Date.  
  
CG: OH YEAH.  
  
CG: THE DATE HAPPENED.  
  
CG: IT HAPPENED LIKE A PUNCH TO THE FACE. LIKE A  
  
CG: I’M NOT STRIDER SO I DON’T HAVE A WHOLE BUNCH OF DUMB ANALOGIES TO CLOG YOUR MESSAGE BOX WITH.  
  
CG: SUFFICE TO SAY IT HAPPENED. THIS DATE SHALL BE FOREVER MARKED IN THE ANNALS OF HISTORY.  
  
GA: You Are Not Being Coy With This Conversation And Actually Curled Up In The Fetal Position With Oreo Ice Cream Again, Are You?  
  
CG: FUCK YOU, OREOS ARE THE BEST INTOXICANT HUMANS HAVE DERIVED YET.  
  
CG: AND NO.  
  
CG: IT WAS WITHOUT A DOUBT  
  
CG: THE  
  
CG: BEST  
  
GA: Karkat?  
  
CG: WHAT?  
  
GA: Oh, I Was Under The Impression That You Had Logged Off.  
  
CG: THE PAUSE WAS FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT.  
  
GA: I See.  
  
GA: In That Case I Believe My Only Recourse Is To Demand That You  
  
GA: “Human Dish.”  
  
CG: WE SHOT ZOMBIES AND GOT BURGERS  
  
GA: And It Was “The Best?”  
  
CG: HELL YES.  
  
GA: …I Do Not Understand Your Idea Of Romance, But Am Happy For You Nonetheless.  
  
So Karkat proceeded to explain it to her for somewhere upwards of two hours, at which point Rose came over and Kanaya started torturing him, so Karkat was forced to surrender his moirail to the insidious clutches of her girlfriend. Sollux was ignoring his own insult, so Karkat decided that the mature thing to do here would be to marathon romance movies and giggle to himself like a wriggler.  
  
This also, was THE BEST.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluffeh fluffeh April Fool's jokes that no one will get because I'm putting these things up laaaaaate.  
> Suffice to say that I think I'm funny even if no one else does.


	3. + 15 EXP: ATTEMPT KISS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting to the exciting part of this story, hoo hoo hoo.  
> And in the meantime, fluffiness. I wanted it, you guys are getting it. Funny how that works.  
> Also: ALIEN SMOOCHES.  
> \----

But you know what the weirdest part about dating John was? Well, besides the overwhelming knowledge that Karkat was probably dreaming and would be dragged back into sentience by the alarm clock from hell (how did John want to date him, how was this even a thing?)—the weird part came into play because they’d already been hanging out on a regular basis while Karkat was busy thinking of moderately unkind things to do to John’s girlfriends. There were various _John and Karkat_ activities that were to be participated in like clockwork (almost all of which involved John’s couch, because neither of them were too creative without the looming pressure of imminent death). They watched movies, they attempted to follow internet recipes—which was mostly just the pair of them fixing disheartened stares at John’s laptop before ordering pizza—and they shot a lot of zombies.  
  
So now those classical activities did not, and refused to, no matter how strongly Karkat willed them to fall into the appropriate slot, feel like they were dating. Which was fine, because if you couldn’t have fun screaming at a television set and throwing popcorn at each other like friends, you were clearly missing the point of life. But it also led to Karkat having to think of actual other things for them to do for their dates. Romantic things (but not too romantic; let’s not scare the human boy), and fun things, and new things—because you were supposed to try new things with your boyfriend, right?  
  
Right.  
  
Karkat wanted someone to explain to him in detail, starting at the very beginning, why this had led to them being at a skate park. How had this seemed like a good plan? No really, he was curious. He expected bullet points to be involved.  
  
“Come on, dude,” John said cheerfully, from where he was skating literal circles around Karkat. He was able to do this only because Karkat had relinquished his death grip on the wall and was now attempting to journey from one end of the park to another, quaking like a newborn hoofbeast and with absolutely zero trust in any of his limbs anymore. John, orbiting past Karkat again like a particularly self-satisfied moon. “You’ve got to pick up some speed if you want to get anywhere!”  
  
Karkat glowered at him. He didn’t want to hear that from John. “You’re cheating,” Karkat snapped, because John totally was. No one was this good their first time skating, or at least Karkat refused to believe they might be when he himself _sucked balls_ at it. The Heir winked at him the next time he whipped past Karkat’s line of sight. The douchebag. Karkat attempted to slide one foot forward. This made his other foot roll to the left.  
  
Wide-eyed, Karkat decided his best bet was to do nothing and attempt to spontaneously mutate out a new set of legs not currently affixed to wheeled torture devices.  
  
“I’m not even cheating that much,” John was saying (while gliding effortlessly over the floor like a rattling, four-eyed Olympic champion). “I just kind of understand the way air and weight work now, I guess? The windy thing just makes absolutely sure I don’t fall.”  
  
Karkat hissed. “How nice for you—“ Now his right leg was beginning to saunter away from his center of gravity. He wasn’t even moving! What the hell?! John snickered, and flicked the side of Karkat’s head. The troll shrieked, wheeling his arms for balance. “Don’t do that! If I fall, I will fuck you up so bad you may never recover!”  
  
John skidded to a halt in front of him, hands on his hips as he leaned down to Karkat’s eye level. “Karkat, that’s a given!” He laughed, unwittingly necessitating his own murder. “I’m not going to let you fall, duh!”  
  
…How was Karkat supposed to become competent at controlling his feelings when John said shit like that?  
  
“Oh,” Karkat mumbled. He shifted his weight to the side a little and a short gust of wind blew the hair back from his ears. It tickled.  
  
“See?” John sighed, but now he was looking slightly embarrassed too. What he’d said had probably caught up with him. Damn the unintentional romantics in the world. Now Karkat was going to have to one-up John and somehow regain control of his heart rate. “But, come _on,_ Karkat! They have ramps!”  
  
“Oh fuck that,” Karkat said, which was the correct response when you had yet to make it fully across the short end of the park. He took a deep breath, flailed his feet for a moment, and then the wheels caught, he had momentum and holy shit, liftoff. Wind whipped at his face and Karkat wasn’t sure what was John’s and what was just the simple prize of going really fast. “Shit!” He gasped, because this was pretty damn cool—and then with more concern—“shit!” A person. Twelve o’clock, directly in front, but no, he could do this. He swerved.  
  
This time it was definitely John; wind pressure made him grit his teeth before he’d righted himself and John was drawing up next to him.  
  
“You okay?” John asked, which was nice of him, considered he was grinning like someone who’d gotten one of those really good coupons for free coffee. Karkat garbled his reply, mostly just nodding and producing variations on demanding a rematch. John patted his back, and sent a burst of wind from his palm to have Karkat careening on his way, swearing in his soul that John would pay for that as soon as the rest of the world stopped looking like it was in slow motion.  
  
This time John shot after him, and drew up next to Karkat with his hair slung back and the silliest smile of them all. Karkat shoved him, because it was obviously mandatory and John pulled on his ear, nearly sending Karkat flailing into some other kid’s very surprised face. So of course they had to race each other, pulling every dirty trick in the book except John didn’t let Karkat fall once and Karkat, for some reason, could not stop laughing.  
  
John suggested the ramps again. “Hell fucking yes,” Karkat said this time, and grabbed the human by the shirtfront. He dragged the dork up the stairs. They made quite an image—John had filled out during the game, sure, but there was something encoded in his DNA that just unrepentantly screamed out “nerd” and to everyone but his fellow game veterans, Karkat looked like some scrawny freckle-faced kid whose hands and feet were too big for the rest of him (those were the rules. They were still trolls in all the ways that counted, except for that Matrix moment when a random human would call him Irish and Karkat would yet again have to ask them what an Irish was).  
  
Together, they were about as far from belonging in a skate park as you could get, and they’d been skating like they were planning on competing for the gold.  
  
The only way this could possibly get better was if John leaned over and they shocked the world with a sloppy interspecies make out, but Karkat, not all dreams come true.  
  
Karkat went first. His stomach dropped out over the ramp and he was soaring like nothing else. He was halfway up the second ramp when it occurred to him that he should turn and Karkat managed it clumsily, yelping, and his grin locked with John’s for a snapshot of magical time before it was back to flying and nothing else mattered.  
  
They stumbled back home around midnight, still keyed up (getting milkshakes afterwards might have been a mistake) and John was talking a mile a minute with Karkat gnawing on his straw and discreetly squeezing his boyfriend’s fingers. “And I still can’t believe you tried to pick a fight with the boarder dude!” John was exclaiming as they got the front door. Unwilling to relinquish John’s fingers, Karkat towed him the rest of the way up the steps.  
  
“I so could have taken him.” Boarder dude had looked like a total wuss. No one needed that many tattoos unless they were trying too hard.  
  
“Well yeah,” John agreed, which made Karkat feel a little like he was dropping off the edge of the ramp again. “But he was three times bigger than you and oh man, his face!” John giggled as Karkat fished for his keys. Where the hell were they?  
  
It might be easier to look for them if he actually used both hands.  
  
No, but seriously, did they sprout legs and walk off on their own?  
  
 _More importantly,_ interrupted the part of Karkat’s thinkpan that was not stalling on unreasonable amounts of happiness, _This is your front door, Karkat. John is at your front door._  
  
 _After a date. At night. No, really. Are you somehow not getting this?_  
  
Aaaaaand there was that ramp feeling again! Boy, did that no longer feel so very comfortable. Karkat stopped questing for his keys to look up at John. The human was still rambling, free hand swinging through the air, and no, he did not appear to have realized that this was a charged situation. Yes, Karkat’s insides transformed into a pulsing knot of distress at the sight of him, as usual. There was just something about John. Maybe the teeth. Maybe the fact that he was smoking hot.  
  
There was a part of Karkat, preserved in its entirety from his schoolfeeding says that felt this was an appropriate moment to start chanting _Karkat and John, sitting in a tree, K—_  
  
This part of Karkat was summarily beaten to death and never heard from again, so don’t worry about him. Worry about Current Karkat, afflicted with an overpowering urge to make good on every movie cliché ever spawned and kiss the boy senseless. Karkat really, really wanted to. was the third official date they’d been on, counting that time at the supermarket where John had been trying to harass Jade, and that wasn’t too soon to be wanting to kiss your boyfriend, was it…? John was attractive. Karkat wasn’t entirely hideous. This was a natural progression. Besides, John had made the first move last time—by all rights, it was now Karkat’s turn.  
  
So he squeezed John’s hand to get his attention and swore to himself that he wouldn’t do anything weird. Karkat leaned over before he could talk himself out of it and touched his lips to John’s for maybe half a second.  
  
And then he went flying through his front door.  
  
No, not the way one might expect, with Karkat attempting to escape face-flaming embarrassment. The door had been unlocked, which was fortunate for Karkat, because a wall of wind had just flung him from the doorstep and bulldozed the troll straight through the entryway.  
  
It slammed open with a crack as John’s shocked face dwindled with distance. Another gust of wind barely prevented Karkat knocking himself unconscious on the banister, arresting him in midflight. Karkat’s feet touched the floor with about four yards between him and John. He gaped at the Heir.  
  
“Oops,” John squeaked.


	4. +10 exp; REMAIN AN UNREPETANT SHITHEAD

                Karkat continued to stare. John had just thrown him through a door.

                The human coughed. “So. That was, um, surprising!”

                John had just thrown him through a door. Through a door.

 _Get it together, Karkat! Words!_ “Sorry.” And right on cue, Karkat’s face was bright red, his capillaries were probably exploding, and so he threw his face into his hands before the misery could mount any higher. “Yeah, my bad, you should go before this hideous lack of social skills becomes contagious.”

                “Um,” John said. “Sure.” He laughed. “Sorry about the windy thing, I was just…”

                “Surprised, yes.” Karkat interrupted. Could trolls die of embarrassment? It felt like it might be a thing. Some kind of reverse natural selection. “I get it.”

                “I had fun today,” John offered, which did not go far when it came to consoling those members of society simultaneously facing profound guilt and also burning with newfound carnal knowledge. _Lips_. “See you tomorrow, Karkat!”

                “Bye,” the troll managed, and eventually gathered himself enough to close his front door. Oh god, clearly he had messed that up all kinds of ways. There was only one way to deal with this.

 

                CG: KANAYA KANAYA KANAYA KANAYA KA

                GA: Oh Dear.

 

                Having sensed that this distress was not something that could be shooshed from cyberspace, Kanaya sacrificed her sleeping schedule to come over and comfort Karkat through his throes of existential agony. Karkat appreciated this. He was going to figure out something really nice to do for Kanaya, when he had finished calming down. For now, he was taking deep breaths and letting her convince him that he was not the very worst troll in existence. An unexpected kiss was not grounds for an immediate break-up and refusal to ever talk to him again.

                “Breathe,” Kanaya reminded him a lot, which did help. Granted, trolls didn’t _need_ oxygen so much, but it did a lot to bring one’s thinking back to the linear instead of a panicked double Mobius Reacharound of What Have I DONE, Am I The Worst Boyfriend Ever?

                “But what if he really is upset?” Karkat asked—asked, not whined, there was an important distinction called shut up—attempting to drag piling objects over his head. “What if there is some kind of human cultural taboo about thou shalt not kiss until exactly this many dates?”

                “If there was, I really doubt John would remember the number,” Kanaya responded, methodically plucking objects off of Karkat’s face with her delicate gray fingers and replacing them in the pile. “So you have little to fear.”

                “I’m offensively disgusting,” Karkat declared, as only a two-time eighth sweeper could angst. Yes, it was his second time around the block. Suffice to say that the game reset a lot of things, including the overwhelmingly joyous process of puberty and Karkat’s patience for horn cysts. “This is the only explanation. I’m hideous and probably have bad breath and deserve a succinct and messy extinction at the hands of the culling drones.”

                “Your breath is fine,” Kanaya said, which was less reassuring than it could have been. She replaced a board game with her hand patted between Karkat’s horns. Karkat groaned. “Karkat, did John act offended? Did he give you any reason to believe that your relationship is over?”

                “He catapulted me through a door,” Karkat mumbled. “This sounds like rejection to me, and to those of us gifted with functional pans. Ow.” Kanaya had just rapped him in the horn with her fist. He opened an eye to glare. She sniffed at him.

                “Perhaps, as he said, he was surprised?” Kanaya’s black lips curved into the kind of smile that made lesser being run away in terror. Beings such as Karkat Vantas and Rose Lalonde instead flung themselves at such smiles like friendly puppies. “I know this must come as a terrible shock to you, Karkat, but most individuals, when they say something, do in fact mean what they’re saying.”

                “You are a spiteful, evil troll, and when the Mother Grub hatches, I hope she eats you,” Karkat growled, and inadvertently proved his moirail’s point.

                “That’s vindictive,” Kanaya observed. “You are already feeling better?” Karkat nodded. You just didn’t mess with Kanaya’s shooshpapping skills. Everybody else go home. “Good. Now, perhaps you would consider actually speaking to John about your feelings, and resolving this misunderstanding?”

                Karkat stared in her in horror. “Maryam, have you gone thoroughly _insane_?”                

                Kanaya sighed.

               

                The next morning, Karkat summoned up all of his courage. It was scrounged from the savings he’d been devoting to entering the Strider hive for the first time, and the military reserves for when he was inevitably called on to kill things again, and the fucking trust fund Sgrub had so lovingly written for him in the process of attempted genocide. It was epic, wholehearted, and he was ready to take on an entire army with the sheer about of temerity thundering through his veins.

                With this power—and only through this—he managed to actually ring the doorbell. While he stood there, resolutely not biting his nails off into little razor slivers that would be hazardous to any girl scouts that dared trespass on his boyfriend’s front step, he reviewed the speech he had prepared and braced for emotional trauma.

                John’s lusus answered the door. Karkat nearly swallowed his tongue and got sent up to John’s room, presumably because asking the Egbert lusus to run a tin can and some string up to John’s room was in poor taste. John was blinking at him before Karkat remembered knocking.

                Karkat lifted a hand. It froze by his ear, uncertain of what it was doing, and whether it was doing it wrong. It really would like to go back behind Karkat’s back but no, gogdammit, it was staying put like a troll. “Hi,” Karkat said. He swallowed. “Are we still cool?”

                John blinked again and then smiled very quickly. “Why are you even asking? Come on,” he grabbed Karkat’s shoulder, tugging him into the room. “Pick out which horrible troll movie you’re going to inflict me with.”

                “Shut up, you love it,” Karkat grumbled, going a little weak-kneed. He grabbed John’s shoulder for support and didn’t get thrown through any doors.

 

                But still, lesson fucking learned. No kissing. Kissing was off-limits. Deploy all anti-lip contact maneuvers and batten the hatches against teenaged lust; yes, cadet, we understand it’s hard, but these are the sacrifices that must be made for Empress and Empire.

                Karkat was not to kiss the boy until the time was right.

 

                Let’s look at the positives, shall we? First, that whole first kiss escapade? It took a lot of the pressure off. Karkat didn’t have to herniate himself trying to be the perfect matesprit/kismesis/boyfriend/if you have an alternate word, why fucking not add it to the list? He had already proven that he should not be allowed out around people. And you know what? John had yet to vomit at the sight of him, so Karkat was counting that as a win. You know what else there was no more pressure about? Thinking about John’s lips all the time. Because Karkat wasn’t doing that. At all.

                Suddenly it was a lot easier to just chill out on the sofa of their choosing, watching movies and discussing whose favorite actors sucked more. Not that they didn’t go out and try random things together too—they did and it remained awesome; Karkat now knew what zorbing was—but sometimes it was just really nice to flop into something cushy, bitch prematurely about questionable movie preferences, and then enthusiastically commentate the whole way through. They maybe ended up catching about half the dialogue (if straits were desperate and Karkat really needed to shut John up, he could generally accomplish this by grabbing his hand and smirking).

                And you know what else? In the following weeks, Karkat had developed some self-confidence. Not so much as to be a prick like Dave (also known as Strider A; for Strider B, please figure out where Jake English has wandered off to), but enough to get up, look himself in the mirror and realize all over again that he was a competent, intelligent, badass troll and he cared enough about himself that he didn’t have to rely on the opinions of others to get his sense of self-worth. He, Karkat Vantas, was pretty great.

                So that last part was a fucking lie. Karkat Vantas was an unrepentant shithead, and although he was totally willing to let the whole kiss thing blow over to the vague recesses of his mind where he’d never think about it, ever—John kept flinching. Because let’s blame John.

                It wasn’t like Karkat started twitching out of his epidermal sheeting whenever John got too close, or caught himself staring at John’s mouth like he was contemplating climbing over the breakfast table and making good on his primitive troll instincts. At no point did Karkat make up a list of hypothetical scenarios that might end in lip contact and actually contemplate a few of them before burning the whole list out of shame and making Kanaya come deal with him again.

                No, let’s blame John’s flinching. There was a personal space bubble that sauntered vaguely into existence in the moments between hand-holding and hugs and slapfights, and if Karkat crossed it, John would flinch back. He would immediately provide an excuse for Karkat to exit said space, ranging from “Bathroom” to “Was there always a five-foot, fire-breathing dog right over there?” A couple of times Karkat wouldn’t even be _doing_ anything, he’d be minding his own business and he’d feel the wind kick up. He’d look over at John to find the human suddenly three feet further away and refusing to meet his eye. What the hell, seriously?                

               And Karkat was even doing a damn good job of following through, because they’d been dating for about two months or so. And.

               There was no good way to say this without sounding like a total asshole, so he was just going to come out with it: _shouldn’t they have kissed?_ Jegus, it’s not like Karkat was demanding John remove his pants and fling himself onto the nearest concupiscent surface. He wanted a kiss from his boyfriend, okay? There, he admitted it. Big fucking deal. He’d wanted to kiss John Egbert since before they met face to face in the game, and dating somehow had managed not to curb this desire.

                But… apparently John didn’t feel the same way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uuuuugh, I hate updates, this is like pulling teeth. Why can't people just magically edit everything for me. Why. Why. Why.  
> Scuze me, I'm gonna go angst on some more stuff.


	5. +20 EXP: You Have Discovered the HUMAN INTERNET!

For the record, Kanaya was no help at all about this kissing situation. She was _negative_ help. Minus one from all assistance scores. Karkat was admittedly being the neediest of all the moirails right now—why was he so unlovable? Why could he not be normal and just get the human boy to kiss him?—but that didn’t excuse conversations like these:

AG: As Your Moirail, I Sympathize.

AG: As Your Friend, I Have Only This To Say:

AG: Karkat.

AG: GO ACTUALLY TALK TO YOUR MATESPRIT.

CG: FUCK YOU, THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS MINE. GO GET YOUR OWN.

Karkat loved Kanaya with all the paleness of a bleach factory, but that suggestion was nothing short of idiotic. Yes, let’s _talk_ to the John human. Then let’s scream incoherently for ten to twelve minutes after failing to get the point across, suffer a cerebral aneurism out of exhaustive rage, and die in our boyfriend’s arms to the sounds of “It’s not me, it’s you.”

And this was the least dramatic scenario that Karkat envisioned. It just couldn’t go well. There was no way it could go well. His concerns on the matter were perfectly justified and Karkat was not at all wussing out (but Captor could still never know about any of this, ever).

So Karkat sought alternative assistance.

Humans weren’t particularly well-endowed in the thinkpan area, but if anyone knew how to make John kiss him, it was probably another human. Since trying to get advice from one of Karkat’s human friends risked them figuring out why he was asking and thus laughing themselves into a coma, Karkat turned to that boundless font of highly fact-checked information that was: the internet.

Humans had actual step-by-step tutorials on the matter of kissing (good to know; trollkind had passed on its abject confusion about quadranting). Karkat scanned the lists, judging the hell out of them because all of this sounded _really_ weird (At what point did you get to show off your fighting prowess, and what did you even do if they didn’t have horns? Mess with the human’s hair?). But the behaviors described were certainly nothing he’d have tried on his own, so he was willing to give it a shot.

Hm. Actually, ‘willing’ was a misleading word. Let’s go with ‘desperate.’

Ultimately, at six sweeps Karkat had been willing to fling his bloodpusher directly into oncoming foot traffic for a chance to make the human _look_ at him. He might be about to embark on the most ridiculously stupid journey of his life, but as much as he hated to admit it… Egbert was worth it.

And stuff.

…Shut up.

 

\----

 

According to the internet, step one of engaging in sloppy makeouts was making yourself what the aggressively smiling human female in the photographed image deemed ‘presentable’.

The internet generously offered advice on how to go about being less overwhelmingly hideous, most of which Karkat ignored.

There was not a damn thing wrong with turtleneck sweaters and sneakers, so anything in _that_ area could go right ahead and fuck itself. Anyway, Karkat had already possibly eaten more breath mints than was legal in most states. He was one desirable troll at the moment, glowering at himself in the bathroom mirror and just daring his reflection to do something even more starkly unattractive than that thing. That thing it was doing right there.

The article discussed one more point he was willing to concede on. Karkat Vantas required kissable lips, and did not know how to go about obtaining these. Lips were lips, weren’t they? Okay, except for John’s, but that had to be some kind of freakish anomaly. Nothing was ever supposed to be that soft. Jegus.

But by comparison, weren’t Karkat’s lips probably like horny tangleweed? Whether or not this merited getting thrown through a door, the internet promised him its wisdom could render Karkat’s lips physically pleasing.

And so began a dread quest. What was exfoliation and why did it sound like something trees did seasonally?

Karkat continued to click links, feeling steadily more out of his depth. Humans put _what_ on their—no, nope, he wasn’t doing that. Next link. Okay, lip balm, that looked harmless. Like stuff Kanaya would use. He could probably borrow some from her, as long as it didn’t turn into a murderous weapon in the middle of attempted application. And exfoliation was apparently some kind of induced molt—that didn’t sound too bad either. Kind of weird to just molt one part of your face, but since when were humans not a full rainbow spectrum of fucked up?

The internet advised him to go for a ‘pink and pouty’ look.

This was not really in the realm of possibilities, Karkat observed twenty minutes later.

He gingerly prodded at his freshly molted lips. His lips felt a lot tougher now that the new skin layer had set—well, duh, he’d molted—and hopefully this leathery texture was more kissable. They did not look that way to Karkat, but John had at least implied that he found Karkat attractive, so presumably pink and pouty wasn’t his ideal. Just as well, because Karkat was going to literally be sick if he had to observe his own unpleasant visage in the mirror any longer.

Time to complete the irresistibility of his lips. Lip balm. Whatever the fuck that was.

 

\----

 

“Kanaya isn’t here,” Rose said, turning a page in her novel. She’d answered the door, taken one look at Karkat, and then immediately gone back to reading the book at hand. Karkat was impressed by that level of devotion. He snuck a glance at the title. “Your crisis will have to wait.”

“It’s not a crisis,” Karkat immediately protested, crossing his arms. Rose looked up from her book again. Shit, was she looking at his lips? …No. Way to be inappropriately self-conscious, you shitlicker. “Anyway, I’m just here to borrow something.”

Rose raised an eyebrow, “Do you intend to return this belonging in its original condition?” Her tone politely implied that the consequences otherwise were dire.

“I’ll probably only need it for five seconds,” Karkat answered. “I promise not to raze this shitty human civilization to the ground with one of Kanaya’s lip supplements, so can I come in now?”

Rose snapped her book shut. “Lip supplements?” She repeated.

“Yeah.” Karkat shrugged a shoulder. “The, uh…” Fuck, he couldn’t remember the name. All of it sounded the same to him. “…The one in a stick. Like Kanaya’s weapon.” They all looked like Kanaya’s weapon, goddamn it. But Rose probably knew what she was doing. She often displayed human cosmetics of her own.

“Lipstick?” Rose’s other eyebrow had joined the first, and they appeared to be merrily conferring with her hairline. “You’re here to borrow Kanaya’s _lipstick_?”

Karkat bristled. “You have a problem with that?”

 

\----

 

Okay, so five seconds was a gross underestimation of how fucking long it took to apply the damn makeup. The squishy part of the tube kept slipping and Karkat could no longer move his hand in a basic ellipsis, apparently, because this looked remarkably like Gamzee’s attempts at applying face paint while _stoned_. How in the fuck was he supposed to keep his hand from wobbling? For that matter, how was he going to get the color out of places he didn’t want it, because he was beginning to look like he’d grown some kind of unwholesome goatee. Fuck. His teeth were smearing it too.

Rose, sitting on Kanaya’s bed was plainly trying not to laugh at him. “Would you care for my help, Karkat?”

Karkat consulted his pride. Karkat’s pride told him to fuck off while he was wearing some kind of supervillian facial hair. He turned to Rose with the stipulation, “If you draw a dick on my face, I will kill you and hide the body where no one will ever find it.”

She took the lipstick from him with a snort. “How charming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse me while I put on my snazzy-as-shit sunglasses and enjoy the fact that we have arrived at the fun part of the plot (for me).  
> For the uninitiated, I have but this one small piece of advice: torturing Karkat is reallyreally fun.  
> (Sorry this is so short. There wasn't a good place to cut the chapter off after this.)


	6. +3 EXP: You have INCREASED PHYSICAL PROXIMITY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm kind of done sulking a little bit, but you guys still aren't getting proper updates. This is purely to make me feel better. Because I am evil. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha.  
> FEARME.

So. The lipstick felt like a six-inch layer of wax all over his mouth and it was going to drive him insane.

_John had better fucking appreciate this_ , Karkat thought as he rang the doorbell to the Egbert hive. _I demand a grade-A sloppy makeout, and maybe some popcorn_. Once again he smacked his lips. Ugh, they glued together every time he did that. This did not feel exceptionally irresistible.

John answered the door with a grin. “Karka—“ He cut himself short, blinking. As Karkat frowned up at him, he ascertained that yes, John was definitely looking at his mouth. He was also continuing to blink. Was this an example of the human eyelid flutter flirtation? Karkat was less than impressed so far.

No, Karkat did not find John blinking at him attractive.

He _didn’t_ , dammit.

“Karkat,” John said slowly. “Um, you look kind of different.” He gestured towards his own mouth, which as always looked like a soft, pillowy masterpiece, and great, now Karkat’s eyes were stuck there. Absently, he smacked his lips again.

“Yes, I am aware,” he grumbled, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Are you planning to let me in, or are you going to make another command decision that I should be informed about?” _Such as you being overpowered with an urge to kiss me? I will not be insulted if you decide on option two, let’s be honest._

But apparently John was not sufficiently overpowered, because he just sort of grinned and stepped aside to let Karkat in. As the door closed, he began to speak quickly. “Okay, so normally I’m all for a good prank, but you look so miserable right now, dude. You can wash it off and I won’t tell anyone.”

“Huh?” Karkat eyeballed him. No, he was not upset that he had not been kissed; yes, this lipstick was really fucking annoying).

“The lipstick,” John clarified. “You can wash it off, and I promise I’ll keep it a secret from Dave.” When Karkat just continued to be confused, John laughed a little nervously. “I mean, this was one of his dares, right?”

What.

John inched closer. “Unless, uh, is this a troll thing? Do you guys’ lips turn colors sometimes? It looks like lipstick, though.” And then he poked Karkat. Right on the lips, with his finger—vastly disappointing when compared with John’s lips, but still a part of his body. Karkat went very still, internalizing the emotional detonation happening up in this hive.

John squinted at his own fingertip to determine, “Yeah, that’s definitely lipstick.”

“I know it’s lipstick,” Karkat said through his teeth. “I happened to be there during the application of said device. A fucking miracle performed itself on the spot and gifted me with this unbelievable level of self-awareness.” John was giving him a look. Karkat spread his hands out, to indicate A) what gives? Or B) still waiting to be kissed here. “Of course it’s fucking lipstick, Egbert!”

He appeared to have stumped the Heir with this conundrum. They stared at each other until Karkat’s shoulder twinged and he dropped his arms. John seemed to be weighing something in his head. “Karkat,” he said gently. “Only girls wear lipstick.”

Oh, okay, clearly John’s inner dumbass had won that debate.

Fuck the human gender binary, and fuck Sollux too—everyone knew exactly whose fault the binary was. Karkat closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The corners of his mouth stuck together. He was going to have to kill something, wasn’t he? “Okay,” he managed to enunciate around the gooey paste that had congealed upon his unfortunate lips. “So, to be clear, you don’t find lipstick attractive? Is that what I am supposed to gather from this frustrating swampland of a conversation?”

“Not really on guys, no,” John said, sounding more puzzled than apologetic. _Why Karkat, would I ever find your cosmetic flirtations attractive?_ Fuck the internet.

Ultimately, though, this stuff was a tremendous pain in the ass to wear; Karkat couldn’t bring himself to be too annoyed at the prospect of feeling like he had lips again (even if they were not sufficiently kissable). “Give me ten minutes,” Karkat muttered, and stalked towards the bathroom, giving into the temptation to smear lipstick over half his face with the back of his hand. It did not make him feel better. John had made popcorn by the time he’d finished scrubbing off much of the rest of his facial skin in the bathroom. Popcorn did help quite a bit. They executed twin, perfectly-timed launches into the sofa, collapsing in movie watching formation while Karkat growled under his breath and mangled the popcorn. _Taste my suffering, tiny dehydrated corn kernels_. John patted his head and kind of left his hand there.

This, Karkat realized, was the closest they had been since Karkat’s troll ass went bowling through the door to his own hive like a charging rhinoceros.

Lipstick hadn’t gotten him kissed, but clearly the internet was onto _something_. Karkat couldn’t lose hope now. He glanced up as the movie played on—John’s eyes were glued to the screen, slightly moist from the touching bonding moment between Peter Parker and his ancestors—and Karkat took a moment to eye John’s lips. In the light of the TV screen they were greenish and not very pouty, but were also one of the most tantalizing sights Karkat had ever inflicted upon himself.

No.  He couldn’t give up hope just yet. John’s lips were counting on him.

\----

GA: Karkat, Rose Told Me You Showed An Interest In Cosmetic Beautification Today?

GA: I Did Not Know You Had Such An Interest.

CG: I REALLY DON’T.

CG: I HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH THIS DAY.

CG: YOU HAVE MY UTTER FUCKING RESPECT FOR PUTTING UP WITH THAT LEVEL OF HARRASSMENT FROM YOUR OWN FACE ON A DAILY BASIS TO MAKE OUT WITH YOUR MATESPRIT.

CG: ALTHOUGH LALONDE WOULD PROBABLY PITY YOU EVEN IF YOU DIDN’T WEAR LIPSTICK

CG: SHE HAS STRANGELY GOOD TASTE

CG: ALSO, TELL HER THAT BOOK SHE RECOMMENDED WAS REALLY GOOD.

GA: I Will

GA: But She Is Saying She Did Not Recommend Any Literature.

Karkat, who had twenty pages until the ending, begged to fucking differ. Tomorrow, he looked up everything by this author.

GA: Karkat, Am I Correct In Assuming This Experimentation With Lipstick Has Something To Do With John?

Karkat thought that instead of embarrassing them both by ranting about his relationship incompetence, it would be better to just link her to the internet article. Also, did he mention this book was really fucking good? Kanaya went idle, probably reading it over, while Karkat devoured a few more pages of the protagonist’s black flirting with her dashing vampire lover. Trollian pinged and he glanced over.

GA: Karkat

GA: This Article Is Referring To Lip Balm.

CG: LIKE THERE’S ANY DIFFERENCE. 

GA : Oh Dear.

GA: Karkat…

GA: No.


	7. +10 EXP: You have TRAUMATIZED YOURSELF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last of the prewrites, nooooo, that is like the death knell of my actually managing to do shit. Also, I should not be writing. Work.  
> Workworkwork.

So plan A had failed (hard, if Kanaya was to be believed). Round two, here we come.

“Make him feel like a man to get him into the mood,” Karkat read out loud. “Because apparently fucking humans require your desperate pleading for them to open a pickle jar or some shit.” He leaned away from the screen with a glower. “How in the FUCK is this not talking about pity?”

Whatever, screw those weak sauce ideas. Yeah, yeah, feigning that you were too stupid to know how to open a door yourself _was_ pretty pathetic, but Karkat could one-up this shit. Let’s just draw the line at actual death. Blood was messy and Jane was two states away. But he could do better than flinging a few grocery bags at John’s face.

Karkat’s life tended towards the sucky in general. That left him with lots of _options_.

 

So he’d spent a good portion of the night narrowing down the selection of tried and true pity-moves. He’d come up with some seriously diabolical plans. He’d considered asking Crabdad to misbehave and then ordering John to lug the lusus from place to place like Karkat lacked the upper body strength to deal with his own custodian (please), but he decided against that—John’s windy thing didn’t have the best control on a good day and Karkat didn’t want his lusus to end up a smear on the ceiling. He also decided against going and finding Kankri, because if John wasn’t feeling particularly heroic, then Karkat would be stuck with his ancestor and this simply could not come to pass.

So instead he dragged John over to his hive, clobbered him with a pillow when John tried to ask where Karkat’s lipstick was, and left him laughing in the sofa cushions while Karkat tromped upstairs to retrieve the holy grail of all pity-inducing items.

Literally. If there were such a thing as holy objects in the world, this was one of them. Karkat’s hands shook a little as he picked it up. He spent a moment just reverently holding it and chirring under his breath.                   
  
“And just what do you have there, young man?” John asked as Karkat shuffled back downstairs. He brightened as he caught a glimpse of the front of it. “Ooh, a movie I haven’t seen before? Gimme!” Karkat immediately whipped the box away from John’s hands.

“Not just any movie, John Egbert,” Karkat growled. “A sacred classic, the likes of which will blow your human thinkpan into infinitesimal smithereens. This is not _a_ movie. This is _The Movie_.” John’s eyes were getting a little rounder. Good. “Not even I can handle this cinematic perfection all the time. But for some inexplicable reason, I feel that you are ready, and I am offering you the privilege of witnessing this masterpiece on my shitty TV. Understand that once you place this disk in the DVD slot, nothing in your life will ever be the same again.  
  
John had started grinning widely, Karkat observed. Yeah, sure, Karkat had totally horrible taste in movies. NOT. John’s eyes were really blue—

Karkat was getting distracted again, crap.  
  
“Karkat?” John tilted his head.

The troll narrowed his eyes and brandished one of the most sacred titles in his DVD collection. “I have only this to ask of you, dumbass: are you prepared?”

John had sat up, knees fidgeting in excitement. “Yeah, totally! Must be pretty good to get you all worked up like this, Karkat. Put it in!”

Karkat nodded stiffly and moved to the DVD player. He could hear John rustling around on the sofa. His heart hammered. The DVD vanished into the dark abyss of the disk reader.   There. It was done now.

It was done.

Karkat flopped down at his boyfriend’s side, tugging a blanket within reach. As the opening trailers began to show, John asked, “So what’s this abou—“

Karkat put a finger over John’s lips. Turnabout was fair play after all (Mother Grub in heaven, SO SOFT), and met John’s eyes with his own. Electricity crackled, tension spinning through Karkat at the thought of what all this evening might—would—contain. John’s lips folded in on themselves slightly, retreating from Karkat’s claws. “Shh,” Karkat murmured. “No more talking. Only amazing movies now.” John’s nose wrinkled. Karkat hushed him again. “Nope, shh. Control your lips.”  
  
“Eheh,” John offered squeakily. He really was excited—wind brushed around Karkat as he retracted his finger. The theme music began to play and Karkat’s jaw tightened in anticipation. He turned his eyes to the TV screen.

He grabbed John’s hand. He’d be needing it.

An hour in and John had both arms wrapped around Karkat and most of his face buried in the troll’s hair. His nose was probably being pulverized against Karkat’s horn. Karkat could literally not take his eyes off of the screen. Music lulled through the room, painfully understated, and Karkat choked back another shaky whimper as the protagonist began to cross the battlefield. John’s arms tightened around him.

Okay, so Karkat had possibly watched this film like clockwork over the sweeps, he knew every line, he knew everything that was going to come to pass. He lasted maybe one scene after John broke, and then they were _both_ clutching at each other, sobbing like wrigglers denied food. “What,” John kept babbling between sobs, as though the movie owed him an explanation for indirectly rearranging his internal organs into a throbbing mass of grief and sympathy. Karkat didn’t have the energy to shoosh him again. He didn’t have the energy for anything but gross sobbing and attempting to somehow curl tighter to John’s shoulder. They both wailed a little bit when the kismesis—the one you couldn’t help but hate for the first half of the movie—actually turned back, and shook his head and just. No. What. NO. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS, COME BACK AND LIVE AND HAVE OBNOXIOUS, BEAUTIFUL BABIES TOGETHER NOOOooooo…

Too many emotions. Please consider Karkat offline for the time being.  
  
So the two teenaged Sgrub veterans sobbed into each other like their lives depended on the volume of tears they could produce in a two hour time period.

Crabdad checked on them briefly. He ascertained that no one had died, observed the movie screen, and then clicked out a sigh before trudging away. Right, that movie again. He’d mop later.

By the end credits, it was a toss-up who was more hysterical. John was shaking all over like his nervous system had been overloaded; Karkat was completely incoherent and just kept squeaking weakly into his boyfriend’s shirt whenever he tried to say anything. John sucked in a wet breath against Karkat. “KARKAT.” Karkat creaked out a moan. It was too soon for words. John sniffled into his skull, whining, “WHAT DID YOU JUST MAKE ME WATCH?”

Karkat’s teeth chattered a little bit when he tried to answer. “ _I-in which a_ —“  
  
John cut him off by squeezing Karkat like he would never let him go again. “I DID NOT MEAN THE TITLE.”

“I thought you’d like it.” The midst of emotionally devastated tears was not an ideal time to realize that your boyfriend smelled like chocolate and coffee.

“IT WAS GORGEOUS IN EVERY WAY.” John hiccupped pathetically against Karkat’s horn. “AND I THINK I HAVE POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER NOW.”

By now Crabdad had returned, and he’d brought a mop. He clicked his mandibles impatiently as Karkat began to lever himself upright, John attached like a particularly determined barnacle, snuffling in the most singularly pitiable way. “No,” John muttered into Karkat’s ear as the troll tried to work out the logistics of moving them both. “You’re not allowed out of my sight, dammit. Just you try and die; I will not let you anywhere in the vicinity of dying.” He squeezed tightly enough that Karkat was sure he’d cut of circulation. These were tingles of joy. Joy, and heartbreak.

“Let’s just go up to my room before my lusus has an episode,” Karkat said, with impressively few whimpers. John was unhelpful, but they still got up the stairs somehow, and crash-landed in Karkat’s pile. Karkat patted his boyfriend’s back tenderly. John garbled something incoherent at him and smashed his head over Karkat’s bloodpusher, staring up at him. He was spectacularly blotchy, as only human skin could accomplish, covered in snot, and whatever parts of Karkat’s soul that were not already broken snapped clean through with the force of the pity that struck him. “It’ll be okay,” Karkat told him helplessly.  
  
“Am I ever going to stop crying?” John demanded. This was a legitimate concern. Karkat had felt similarly, oh, pretty much every time he decided to involve himself in that movie.

“Just let it out,” Karkat advised him. John’s eyes continued to overflow, squeezing shut periodically just to shock Karkat with the flames of his pity when they opened anew and begged him not to go anywhere, and definitely not to start any tragically ill-fated wars. Karkat had started purring between his own tears, trying to calm John down. John curled against him like that really did help, and continued shaking.

He was so pitiable, so perfect, and Karkat was flushing for him so hard in this moment that he thought he would pass out.

It would later occur to him that it might have been easier to act on this inflaming redrom if one of them had been capable of doing something other than traumatized weeping.

So plan B was a bust.  
  
Except not really, because Karkat had gotten to watch one of his favorite movies—god, it made you cry out every single emotion you’d ever possessed—and he also got to snuggle the most strikingly, pitiable matesprit that New Earth had to offer for somewhere upwards of three hours before John was able to stop crying and they’d proceeded to cheer-up eat sandwiches.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted this to be a oneshot like Sour Candy Endings, but then I got excited about plot things and yeah... Weird artsy opening, multi-chaptered thingamajig, and I refuse to accept judgment on how I spend my time because A) this was started FOREVER ago (kind of like Imperative, a 20K fic that no one has ever seen) and I want it to get finished, and
> 
> B) JohnKat, shut up.
> 
> Enjoy chapter one's relative peacefulness, you know it won't last. 
> 
> Yes, I DO ship Karkat pale with half the cast of this fandom. Stop judging me.


End file.
